Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker wants to play matchmaker, pairing agile fintech innovators with centuries old Wall Street staples. On Thursday, working with the Partnership Fund for New York City and financial planning startup LearnVest, the hosted about 40 fintech startups and eight large institutions to talk about working together.

“The goal is to highlight the fact that large companies and startups can work successfully together and that there is a real opportunity to expand that opportunity beyond New York and Silicon Valley, but across the United States," explained Pritzker. “We think we have a real role in helping this industry lift itself up and talk about all the good that can come for the average American if fintech can continue to take off."

The event was the second in a Department of Commerce series called Open for Innovation, and the first to focus on a specific industry. The idea of collaboration, however, is not entirely new for fintech. Already the disruptor-disrupted relationship is playing out differently in finance than in other industries, with both parties by and large playing much nicer than, say, Uber and the world's taxi companies. A sizable portion of $13.5 billion invested in fintech last year came from big banks and other financial institutions.

While the main event was closed to the press, Pritzker, LearnVest CEO Alexa von Tobel and Partnership Fund CEO Maria Gotsch sat down with FORBES to share some of what they learned. Also joining in the conversation were John Schlifske, CEO of which acquired LearnVest last year, and Jon Stein CEO of asset management startup Betterment.

Below is a lightly edited and condensed transcript of that conversation.

What are the key ideas from today you are each going to bring back to your organizations?

Alexa von Tobel:

One of the things we were excited to talk about today is how working together with big financial institution is a really great way to create even more momentum for innovation in fintech. We believe there is enormous momentum to be able to help empower America’s wallet. Over the last three years we have seen a transformation from the big banks saying: ‘uh oh they are competitors, I’m scared of them.’ To: ‘Let’s embrace them.’ We had OnDeck Capital here, which is working with JP Morgan. We’ve been acquired by Northwestern Mutual, and nine months later it is going better than we expected. And Betterment is working with lots of big institutions on their 401(k) platform.

We’ve seen this era-shift to the big banks embracing fintech startups and investing in us. It is creating a lot of momentum. We want to welcome more entrepreneurs to come and keep innovating because America really needs it. There are not a lot of fintech entrepreneurs. It is a hard space to innovate in, so getting everyone together, convening to say, ‘We are here and we are here to stay,’ is important.

John Schlifske:

There is this big gap between what consumers in the United States need for their financial security and what’s out there. The innovation that is going on really helps close that gap. Instead of people being on their own and trying to figure out how to save, invest and protect what they have, through the digital technologies we are building, we can make it so they are not on their own. They have a partner in getting across the finish line. The innovation that is occurring here is taking people from being lost, to actually knowing where they are, where they are going and how to get there. We talked about how to make that more visible to the United States.

Maria Gotsch:

But it isn’t easy. I give credit to the Secretary for putting this on the radar and having an event like this. A lot of the innovation is coming from entrepreneurs outside of financial services who are using all these new tools. They think they understand the problems of a large financial institutions, but the problems they are solving are not necessarily the problems the large institutions have. So these kinds of forums, that bring together the two pieces, where it’s a dialogue on both sides, are powerful and are going to help accelerate the pace that the innovation can come together.

Secretary Penny Pritzker:

One of my observations here is that the large institutions, because of their structures and because of the regulatory environment they live under, want to serve a broader market, but can’t with the products they have today. They need to find a way, using technology, to create margin in products. Let’s face it, financial services businesses need to earn a profit, a reasonable profit. They cannot do it without new innovative technologies.

Going from room to room today you heard large companies saying: ‘Oh my, that solution is really great. Here is the pain that I am feeling and that can really help my pain.’ The thing we learned is that there are regulatory impediments that stand between the solution and the large company that needs it. If the large companies wants to help the average American save more and LearnVest has solutions that can help Americans save more, the question becomes: How do they work together and not violate the regulatory structure that exists today? But LearnVest needs capital and access to data in order to be able to test and improve their products. Betterment the same thing. How does, for example, a LearnVest or a Betterment get enough capital? What did you say it took $75 million?

Von Tobel:

We raised $75 million and then got acquired. Betterment has raised $105 million.

Jon Stein:

And counting.

Pritzker:

The point is the venture capital community is not large enough to be able to fund that, the large companies want to be able to participate in the growth of new solutions. What we are interested in at the Department of Commerce is: What are the pain points in between? And how can we work together to help a fast growing sector of our economy, that can create good jobs for average Americans and provide solutions for average Americans. How can we help that? Our job at the Department is to help create the conditions for the economy to grow and the private sector to grow. Our role is being the voice of business as policies are being made. One of the things we want to do is to convene in Washington to talk about the specific challenges and the specific opportunities that are not being addressed because of these challenges.